Story by: Kwamboka Oyaro for African Renewal | (Above) Image courtesy of: AkiraChix
One of Africa’s leading tech start-up spreads its wings. (Above) Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta visiting AkiraChix centre in Nairobi.
It was a bright morning in March 2010, when a group of tech-savvy youths converged at a small hall in Nairobi to discuss innovation and technology. Four young women exchanged phone numbers, clearly excited by plans they shared that would put some of the novel ideas they discussed to good use.
That was an auspicious week for Judith Ogiwar, Linda Kamau, Angela Lungati and Marie Githinji, all graduates of information technology-related courses. It was the week they launched AkiraChix, a non-profit organization that aims to entice girls to embrace technology and offer them free basic training in Web Design, Mobile Application Development, Graphic Design and Entrepreneurship. The word Akira is Japanese for intelligence, while Chix is slang for girls.
That year, AkiraChix began training young people, mostly girls, in basic computer skills. They held classes outdoors and used laptops to train the enthusiastic young students.
“AkiraChix’s desire is to pass skills to young girls to enable them to appreciate technology as a viable career path and not a ‘boys only’ club,” says Angela, a software development graduate of Strathmore University and also a director at Ushahidi, a Kenyan open-source software tech company whose products are used across the world.
In seven years, AkiraChix has grown in leaps and bounds, so much so that when former US President Barack Obama visited Nairobi in 2016, he got to share the stage with AkiraChix during the opening of the 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit that was held in Nairobi, Kenya, on July 25-26. Two years earlier, former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon toured Kenya and paid AkiraChix a courtesy call, telling them: “You are the hope of Africa”.
To read the full article, visit Africa Renewal.
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